These old-growth trees, at least 200 years old, were saved from cutting off the Cascade Lakes Highway between Bend and Mt. Bachelor. (Courtesy of Erik Fernandez)
In 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order calling for the protection of the last mature and old-growth forests on federal lands, but the Trump administration poses an existential threat to what’s left of these ancient trees.
Oregon has its own dwindling supply of old-growth forests that need saving, and Gov. Tina Kotek could consider stepping up to protect what remains.
Old-growth forests in the Northwest provide habitat for hundreds of animals and plants found nowhere else on the planet, including adorable red tree voles and stately northern spotted owls. These forests add trees and large branches to streams, which is essential to healthy salmon habitat. They store more carbon than younger forests and are more resilient to fire, making them a critical component of Oregon’s efforts to address the mounting dangers of climate change.
Our state oversees more than 600,000 acres of forest in western Oregon, including the Tillamook and Clatsop State forests as well as others. For too long these forests have been managed primarily for the benefit of the timber industry with little care for salmon, water quality, wildlife, climate change or people. Following decades of industrial logging, just 6% — or roughly 41,500 acres — of the state’s forests are mature or old growth.
Thanks to litigation by the Center for Biological Diversity, where I work, this is beginning to change. But more needs to be done — and fast.
Last year the Oregon Board of Forestry, which oversees state forest management, approved proceeding with a habitat conservation plan that will make roughly 45% of our state forests off limits to most logging. Unfortunately, roughly 9,500 acres of mature and old-growth forest, nearly one-quarter of what remains, have been left out of these conservation areas and will be clear-cut.
This is where Kotek’s leadership is badly needed. She can provide a ray of hope in light of Trump’s vow to let timber and other extractive industries plunder our federal public lands.
Protecting the last old forests on Oregon state lands would mean setting aside just a tiny fraction of the forests, yet the Board of Forestry is unlikely to take this extremely modest step unless the governor advocates for it.
That’s because of an arcane system that makes the state Department of Forestry’s budget, and funding for basic services for several Oregon counties, dependent on timber harvest profits. This has long hampered better management of state forests that would protect water quality, wildlife and our climate.
It’s long past time to find another way to fund services that doesn’t come at the expense of our state’s forests, waters and wildlife.
Kotek has taken important steps to transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy, which is critical to addressing the climate crisis. But she’s been nearly silent on the other great crisis facing humanity — wildlife extinction. Scientists from around the world have been banging alarm bells over the fact that we’re losing species at a greatly accelerated rate because of humanity’s ever-expanding footprint.
Like climate change, the extinction crisis threatens to unravel our planet’s life support system. Plants and animals provide all our food and most of our medicines. They’re the building blocks of ecosystems, which clean our air and water, cycle nutrients, pollinate crops and moderate the climate. That so many species are rapidly disappearing shows that we’re fouling our nest at our own peril.
The biggest cause of extinction is habitat destruction. To stem the extinction crisis we must protect more of the natural world and the irreplaceable forests, plains, deserts and oceans where plants and animals live.
With Kotek;s support, the Board of Forestry could safeguard Oregon’s last old forests on state land. Any short-term cost would be well worth the benefit to future generations, who deserve to walk among these ancient trees.
Kotek could join an inspiring group of state and local leaders proving that climate action and nature protection doesn’t stop at the national level. That would be priceless.
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